Eating Healthy Options

[Hartmann]

I just finished "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan. He basically rips apart the idea of "nutrionism" pointing out that things like omega-3 pills are nowhere close to as good for you as just eating fish. How beta-carotene pills that were touted to prevent cancer actually cause it.

His whole point is that if we eat food we should eat mostly plants and not too much. He cites the French, the Italians, the Japanese and how their diets are completely different from each other but they're still healthier than us.

[Hartmann]

I think the main downside to processed foods is all the extra sugar & salt that's typically added. Plus there's usually nutrient loss from high heat cooking/canning and sitting on a shelf for weeks/months. It's certainly not as simple as processed = bad, unprocessed = good, but I think you have to pay a lot of attention to the nutritional labels on packaged food.

That's pretty much my thought.

I saw a commercial last night for a white spaghetti pasta with "Added Vitamins and Nutrients" specifically marketed to moms who wanted their kids to be healthy. Sorry, that doesn't jive with me. White flour turns to sugar in the body, and rather than feeding the kid some vegetables, the mom buys noodles that claim to have vitamins.

I am not advocating going out and buying all organic, I don't buy a lot of it myself. The best advice in the book is to shop the outside of stores rather than the interior aisles. The good stuff is on the outside and most of the "bad" stuff is in the interior. I dunno, it just makes sense to me to eat more vegetables and fruits. A lot people don't like the taste of that stuff because they're used to the sugar we get from breads.

And no, Spectatrix, I have not read his other book, though I will probably pick it up.